Dawn mist over farmland on the east coast of Scotland

The foundry

A workshop for looking at the British press in finer cuts

We do not publish breaking news. We write the field guide: ownership, money, law, and the independent titles that still do the slow work.

Why East Scryne

East Scryne Farm, Carnoustie DD7 6LL, UK is a working farm address, not a WeWork. The North Sea is close enough to hear in a west wind. Carnoustie is a golf town with a station; Dundee, with its print heritage, sits up the coast. We chose it because British media analysis is still written as if the country ends at Zone 6.

Scotland has its own freedom-of-information statute, a press culture shaped by DC Thomson as much as by Fleet Street, and a cluster of independent investigations — The Ferret first among them — that London desks treat as local colour. Starting here is a method.

2015–

The current independent wave

Angus

Where the foundry sits

Writing desk beside a sash window looking onto a grey North Sea

What “decanate” is doing here

In astrology a decanate is a ten-degree face of a sign — thirty-six of them around the wheel. We stole the word because British media commentary still talks in twelves: “the BBC”, “the tabloids”, “social media”. Those signs are too coarse. A foundry is where metal is poured into a shape.

Desk research

Companies House, Ofcom ownership reports, IPSO and IMPRESS registers, charity filings, and the Media Reform Coalition’s counts. We prefer a filing to a vibe.

Close reading

We subscribe to independent titles and read them as a beat, including the ones we disagree with. A briefing house that only quotes its friends is a pamphlet.

Plain English

Press law and media economics are written in a dialect designed to keep civilians out. We translate without sanding off the difficulty.

What we are not

  • Not a daily newsroom. If you want a scoop, write to the titles in our newsrooms guide.
  • Not a regulator or a press-complaints desk. Corrections about our own pages go to [email protected].
  • Not a clearing house for partisan “alternative media” that recycles claims without documents.
  • Not a consultancy selling media training to the same newsrooms we write about.
Metal letterpress type in a wooden composing stick

Visit is by arrangement

East Scryne is a farm, not a newsroom with a front desk. Email first. We will tell you whether a conversation is useful, and whether the track is passable.

Write to the foundry